Program File Placement Problem for Machine-to-Machine Service Network Platform

Takehiro SATO  Eiji OKI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E102-B   No.3   pp.418-428
Publication Date: 2019/03/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.2018NVP0001
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Network Virtualization and Network Softwarization for Diverse 5G Services)
Category: 
Keyword: 
IoT,  M2M,  placement problem,  optimization,  NP-completeness,  heuristic algorithm,  

Full Text: FreePDF

Summary: 
The Machine-to-Machine (M2M) service network platform accommodates M2M communications traffic efficiently by using tree-structured networks and the computation resources deployed on network nodes. In the M2M service network platform, program files required for controlling devices are placed on network nodes, which have different amounts of computation resources according to their position in the hierarchy. The program files must be dynamically repositioned in response to service quality requests from each device, such as computation power, link bandwidth, and latency. This paper proposes a Program File Placement (PFP) method for the M2M service network platform. First, the PFP problem is formulated in the Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) approach. We prove that the decision version of the PFP problem is NP-complete. Next, we present heuristic algorithms that attain sub-optimal but attractive solutions. Evaluations show that the heuristic algorithm based on the number of devices that share a program file reduces the total number of placed program files compared to the algorithm that moves program files based on their position.